OilPrice author assesses AI’s impact on employment and human thinking
Salman Ghouri, the author of an OilPrice article, urged people not to view artificial intelligence as either an unconditional threat or a technology without risks. In his view, AI can significantly increase productivity, accelerate scientific research, and help medicine, education, and industry, while also changing the labor market and approaches to decision-making.
Jobs and new professions
Ghouri compares the development of AI to previous technological changes—the emergence of electricity, transportation, calculators, computers, smartphones, and the internet. Such innovations displaced certain professions but also contributed to the emergence of new occupations and workers’ transition to other sectors of the economy.
At the same time, the author believes that artificial intelligence may differ from previous technologies because it can perform not only physical labor or calculations, but also analyze information, recognize patterns, create texts, generate recommendations, and carry out tasks that previously required human judgment.
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AI is already being used or developed for forecasting in the energy sector, oil refining optimization, environmental analysis, medicine, agricultural production, finance, and industry. As an example, Ghouri cites strategic planning in oil and gas companies: the work of teams that spend months preparing forecasting models, performance indicators, business plans, and optimization strategies could potentially be largely transferred to AI systems supervised by several specialists.
The risk of dependence on technology
The author also warns against excessive dependence on digital assistants. He notes that people increasingly rely on smartphones, search engines, GPS, and AI to find information, conduct analysis, and receive recommendations. In Ghouri’s view, this may weaken independent thinking skills, memory, and confidence in one’s own decisions.
Among other risks, he names the possible mass displacement of workers, the concentration of economic influence, disinformation, privacy issues, and the loss of control over increasingly complex systems. The author believes that policymakers, economists, educators, and researchers should seek new approaches to income distribution, education, taxation, and social protection if the need for human labor declines significantly.
